In the late twentieth century, John Rawls reinvigorated the social contract theory in political philosophy. Previous contract theories could not explain how those bound by the social contract consent to be bound. Rawls ...

Starting from an internalist, evidentialist, deontological conception of epistemic justification, this dissertation constitutes a defense of common sense epistemology. Common sense epistemology is a theory of ultimate ...

The philosophical schools of late antiquity commonly diagnosed human unhappiness as rooted in some fundamental disorder in our desires, and offered various therapies or prescriptions for the healing of desire. Among these ...

According to philosophical situationists, empirical psychology suggests that most people are not virtuous, and that we should be skeptical about the possibility of cultivating virtue. I argue against the second claim by ...

Francis Turretin (1623–1687) places a threefold scheme of right (ius) within the framework of Thomistic natural law to explain the relationship between the divine will and the moral order. He centers his inquiry on a ...

In contrast to the widely held view that emotions are obstacles to ideal epistemic functioning, emotions, as evaluative perceptual states, can contribute in significant ways to our achievement of valuable epistemic goods ...

Evidentialist views in epistemology, like that of Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, define epistemic justification at least partially in terms of evidential support. According to these views, a person is justified in believing ...

One of the primary tasks of the philosopher is to explain what it is for something to be the case – what it is for one event (substance, fact) to cause another, what it is for an action to be obligatory, what it is for an ...

In this dissertation I argue that Murdoch’s philosophical-ethical project is best understood as an anti-Enlightenment genealogical narrative. I maintain that her work consistently displays four fundamental features that ...

We moderns have lost a grasp on some of our most commonly used moral concepts. Or rather, the moral concepts that we use everyday have, in our grasp, lost the intelligibility they once enjoyed. Contemporary moral judgments ...

The ultimate aim of Kierkegaard's authorship is to build up his reader's character. Kierkegaard's signed, religious works suggest this reading, but some interpreters say that the more indirect, pseudonymous character of ...

It is the focus of this dissertation to articulate Pascal’s position, which may be viewed
as a middle ground between skepticism and dogmatism; a position that induces the reader
to seek. The second and third chapters ...

This dissertation is a comparative study of the philosophy of John Rawls and the Confucian Analects regarding the idea of a sense of justice. The first aim of this work is to correct a view that has been advanced by several ...

It is my purpose in this thesis to explore the "reality" of illness, using philosophical phenomenology as a guide. In particular, I am concerned to show that the experience of illness, rather than representing a shared ...

Under the assumption that God deliberates when he decides which world he will create, I set out to build a model for God’s deliberation. The first chapter will lay the ground and outline each chapter. From Chapter Two ...

Neo-Kantian constructivism aspires to respond to moral skepticism by compelling
agents to act morally on pain of irrationality. According to Christine Korsgaard, a
leading proponent of constructivism, we construct all ...

Starting with William James’s lectures on saintliness in The Varieties of Religious Experience, twentieth and twenty-first century moral philosophers have attempted to understand the relationship between moral philosophy ...

What are the freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person? I examine several key authors beginning with Harry Frankfurt that have contributed to this debate in recent years, and ...

Contemporary moral realists assume that goodness is a property susceptible to Kripkean/Putnamian developments in philosophy of language and metaphysics. However, close attention to the actual use of the term ‘good’ reveals ...

The role of theism in Thomas Reid’s epistemology remains an unresolved question. Opinions range from outright denials that theism has any relevance to Reid’s epistemology to claims that Reid’s epistemology depends upon ...